Hugh Hewitt MEGA PING!!
Is this your take, too John?
BINGO!
Hugh nailed this one
"The Republican memo focused on defeating the country's enemies.Wow.
The Democratic memo focused on defeating the Republicans.In a nutshell, that is the crucial difference between the parties:
The Republican Party priority is national security.
The Democratic Party priority is Democratic Party power." - Hugh Hewitt
Hugh certainly knows how to frame this important issue!.
(If you want OFF - or ON - my "Hugh Hewitt PING list" - please let me know)
The second memo was authored by the staff to the Senate's Democrats sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee.From www.hughhewitt.com:Its focus was on how to attack President Bush – how to manipulate the Committee's rules and its investigations so that both would serve partisan, short-term goals of wounding the president during an election year.
Posted at 9:50 AM, Pacific
Here is the text of the memo sent by Democratic Staff of the Senate Intelligence committee:
Transcript of a memo written by a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee staff suggesting how to make the greatest gain off of intelligence data leading to the war against Iraq.We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:
1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard. For example, in addition to the president's State of the Union speech, the chairman has agreed to look at the activities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department. The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and co-signs our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. (Note: we can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.)
2) Assiduously prepare Democratic "additional views" to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it. In that regard, we have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims and contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry. The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an independent commission (i.e. the Corzine amendment).
3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation at any time-- but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year either:
A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report -- thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public: 1) additional views on the interim report; 2) announcement of our independent investigation; and 3) additional views on the final investigation; or B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue. We could attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the "use" of intelligence.
In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter foot-dragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman; we have independently submitted written questions to DoD; and we are preparing further independent requests for information.
Summary
Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives -- of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives and methods.
Heehee! He said Rockerfeller...as in "off his rocker"?
Well, I agree with Hewitt and I hope the pubbies play hard ball with this issue. The dems are being downright unpatriotic and obstructing the will of the people. They're traitorous! They want to win at all cost, like school yard bullies, and that is far too high a price to pay.
It is so very unflattering as well, hee hee, and it reveals so clearly, their ugly partisan selfish-interested underbelly.
Isn't that Zell Miller a God-send? He's a godly man full of winsome character...so unlike that crappy Jeffords who sold his party out for a temporary leadership position. Jeffords didn't know a thing about godly character.
I'm encouraged!
The refusal by Levin to denounce the memo on Sunday during his appearance with Tony Snow on Fox News Sunday was an opportunity to show himself as a genuine advocate for national defense by demanding an investigation into the staff who composed the hit plan on the president.See also, from www.ukar.org:Instead, Levin fumed on national television that the memo had been swiped...
What was the reason that impelled The Times to publish this material in the first place? The basic reason is ... that we believe "that it is in the interest of the people of this country to be informed...." A fundamental responsibility of the press in this democracy is to publish information that helps the people of the United States to understand the processes of their own government, especially when those processes have been clouded over in a hazy veil of public dissimulation and even deception.Sauce for the goose?
As a newspaper that takes seriously its obligation and its responsibilities to the public, we believe that, once this material fell into our hands, it was not only in the interests of the American people to publish it but, even more emphatically, it would have been an abnegation of responsibility and a renunciation of our obligations under the First Amendment not to have published it.
(Excerpt from a New York Times editorial of June 16, 1971, in The Pentagon Papers, 1971, p. 644)
I wonder what his defination would be?
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